Styx Go Into Near Space With Video for ‘Radio Silence’

Styx's new album, The Mission, is a concept album that envisions a future manned mission to Mars. So for the video for its second single, "Radio Silence," they literally launched the record into space. You can watch it above.

According to a press release we received, Back in April, Dr. Tony Phillips, a scientist, and his team of students attached sealed vinyl and CD copies of The Mission to the payload of a weather balloon. They launched the balloon into space near the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The balloon popped once it reached the height of 111,000 feet -- a region defined as "near space," and the contents plummeted back to Earth, landing in a forest of Joshua trees in Nevada.

Also attached was a video camera, and the entire journey, roughly three hours and 20 minutes, was captured. Styx's video uses time-lapse technology to condense the footage into the length of "Radio Silence." Surprisingly, neither the CD nor the vinyl, which is only visible at the 3:29 mark, shortly after the balloon pops, were damaged during the trip.

This is believed to be the highest a vinyl record has gone into while completely exposed. Last year, Jack White attached a turntable, which played a copy of the late astronomer Carl Sagan's spoken word "A Glorious Dawn," to a high-altitude balloon and sent it up. According to White's Third Man Records, the "Icarus Craft," as it was called, reached a height of 94,413 above the Earth. White had been talking about wanting to play a record in space since 2012.